Advanced Visualization for Dynamic Meta-Network Analysis: NetScenes

Our objective is to enable military analysts to rapidly produce intelligence results related to human social contexts, and to improve the quality of the underlying analyses based on dynamic meta-network data. We focus on the visual analytics and decision aids needed to support target identification, political elite assessment and resiliency analysis. Our goal is rapid sense-making given dynamic meta-network data regardless of network size or information certainty using visual analytics that support critical feature assessment; rather than improved visualization of massive amounts of data. We enable techniques to assess visually and statistically core features of the network, the impact of alternative courses of action, the level and source of uncertainty and so its impact on the analysis. Our approach utilizes intelligent drill-down techniques that given the mission, network size, and device automatically changes the network scene; critical point visualization; iconology; uncertainty visualization; and special"visual windows"for exploring brokers, emergent leaders, and power holders; and non-graph based visualization of meta-network data. We leverage the existing *ORA, *ORA-GIS, and *ORA-Loom tools and supplement these with GUI"s and new visualization capabilities designed for the warfighter and military analyst and based on workflows and needs identified by working directly with military intelligence officers.